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Notable & Quotable

Benjamin Franklin on the economic folly of export duties.

May 23, 2013 7:07 p.m. ET

Benjamin Franklin to James Lovell, July 1778:

To lay duties on a commodity exported, which our neighbors want, is a knavish attempt to get something for nothing. The statesman who first invented it had the genius of a pickpocket, and would have been a pickpocket if fortune had suitably placed him. The nations who have practiced it,...